I should make but a poor historian, for I have not stuck to my
chronology. But as I write, the vivid recollections are those that I
set down. I have forgotten two things of great importance. First, the
departure of Father Gibault with several Creole gentlemen and a spy of
Colonel Clark’s for Vincennes, and their triumphant return in August.
The sacrifice of the good priest had not been in vain, and he came back
with the joyous news of a peaceful conquest. The stars and stripes now
waved over the fort, and the French themselves had put it there. And the
vast stretch of country from that place westward to the Father of Waters
was now American.
And that brings me to the second oversight. The surprise and conquest of
Cahokia by Bowman and his men was like that of Kaskaskia. And the French
there were loyal, too, offering their militia for service in the place
of those men of Bowman’s company who would not reënlist. These came to
Kaskaskia to join our home-goers, and no sooner had the hundred marched
out of the gate and taken up their way for Kentucky than Colonel Clark
began the drilling of the new troops.
Captain Leonard Helm was sent to take charge of Vincennes, and Captain
Montgomery set out across the mountains for Williamsburg with letters
praying the governor of Virginia to come to our assistance.
For another cloud had risen in the horizon: another problem for Clark
to face of greater portent than all the others. A messenger from Captain
Bowman at Cohos came riding down the street on a scraggly French pony,
and pulled up before headquarters. The messenger was Sergeant Thomas
McChesney, and his long legs almost reached the ground on either side of
the little beast. Leaping from the saddle, he seized me in his arms, set
me down, and bade me tell Colonel Clark of his arrival.
It was a sultry August morning. Within the hour Colonel Clark and Tom
and myself were riding over the dusty trace that wound westward across
the common lands of the village, which was known as the Fort Chartres
road. The heat-haze shimmered in the distance, and there was no sound in
plain or village save the tinkle of a cowbell from the clumps of shade.
Colonel Clark rode twenty paces in front, alone, his head bowed with
thinking.
“They’re coming into Cahokia as thick as bees out’n a gum, Davy,” said
Tom; “seems like there’s thousands of ‘em. Nothin’ will do ‘em but they
must see the Colonel,--the varmints. And they’ve got patience, they’ll
wait thar till the b’ars git fat. I reckon they ‘low Clark’s got
the armies of Congress behind him. If they knowed,” said Tom, with a
chuckle, “if they knowed that we’d only got seventy of the boys and some
hundred Frenchies in the army! I reckon the Colonel’s too cute for ‘em.”
The savages in Cahokia were as the leaves of the forest. Curiosity,
that mainspring of the Indian character, had brought the chiefs, big and
little, to see with their own eyes the great Captain of the Long Knives.
In vain had the faithful Bowman put them off. They would wait. Clark
must come. And Clark was coming, for he was not the man to quail at such
a crisis. For the crux of the whole matter was here. And if he failed to
impress them with his power, with the might of the Congress for which he
fought, no man of his would ever see Kentucky again.
As we rode through the bottom under the pecan trees we talked of Polly
Ann, Tom and I, and of our little home by the Salt River far to the
southward, where we would live in peace when the campaign was over. Tom
had written her, painfully enough, an affectionate scrawl, which he sent
by one of Captain Linn’s men. And I, too, had written. My letter had
been about Tom, and how he had become a sergeant, and what a favorite
he was with Bowman and the Colonel. Poor Polly Ann! She could not write,
but a runner from Harrodstown who was a friend of Tom’s had carried
all the way to Cahokia, in the pocket with his despatches, a fold of
nettle-bark linen. Tom pulled it from the bosom of his hunting shirt to
show me, and in it was a little ring of hair like unto the finest spun
red-gold. This was the message Polly Ann had sent,--a message from
little Tom as well.
At Prairie du Rocher, at St. Philippe, the inhabitants lined the streets
to do homage to this man of strange power who rode, unattended and
unafraid, to the council of the savage tribes which had terrorized his
people of Kentucky. From the ramparts of Fort Chartres (once one of the
mighty chain of strongholds to protect a new France, and now deserted
like Massacre), I gazed for the first time in awe at the turgid flood of
the Mississippi, and at the lands of the Spanish king beyond. With never
ceasing fury the river tore at his clay banks and worried the green
islands that braved his charge. And my boyish fancy pictured to itself
the monsters which might lie hidden in his muddy depths.
We lay that night in the open at a spring on the bluffs, and the next
morning beheld the church tower of Cahokia. A little way from the town
we perceived an odd gathering on the road, the yellowed and weathered
hunting shirts of Bowman’s company mixed with the motley dress of the
Creole volunteers. Some of these gentlemen wore the costume of coureurs
du bois, others had odd regimental coats and hats which had seen much
service. Besides the military was a sober deputation of citizens, and
hovering behind the whole a horde of curious, blanketed braves, come to
get a first glimpse of the great white captain. So escorted, we crossed
at the mill, came to a shady street that faced the little river, and
stopped at the stone house where Colonel Clark was to abide.
On that day, and for many days more, that street was thronged with
warriors. Chiefs in gala dress strutted up and down, feathered
and plumed and blanketed, smeared with paint, bedecked with rude
jewellery,--earrings and bracelets. From the remote forests of the north
they had come, where the cold winds blow off the blue lakes; from
the prairies to the east; from the upper running waters, where the
Mississippi flows clear and undefiled by the muddy flood; from the
villages and wigwams of the sluggish Wabash; and from the sandy, piny
country between the great northern seas where Michilimackinac stands
guard alone,--Sacs and Foxes, Chippeways and Maumies and Missesogies,
Puans and Pottawattomies, chiefs and medicine men.
Well might the sleep of the good citizens be disturbed, and the women
fear to venture to the creek with their linen and their paddles!
The lives of these people hung in truth upon a slender thing--the
bearing of one man. All day long the great chiefs sought an audience
with him, but he sent them word that matters would be settled in the
council that was to come. All day long the warriors lined the picket
fence in front of the house, and more than once Tom McChesney roughly
shouldered a lane through them that timid visitors might pass. Like a
pack of wolves, they watched narrowly for any sign of weakness. As for
Tom, they were to him as so many dogs.
“Ye varmints!” he cried, “I’ll take a blizz’rd at ye if ye don’t keep
the way clear.”
At that they would give back grudgingly with a chorus of grunts, only to
close in again as tightly as before. But they came to have a wholesome
regard for the sun-browned man with the red hair who guarded the
Colonel’s privacy. The boy who sat on the door-step, the son of the
great Pale Face Chief (as they called me), was a never ending source
of comment among them. Once Colonel Clark sent for me. The little front
room of this house was not unlike the one we had occupied at Kaskaskia.
It had bare walls, a plain table and chairs, and a crucifix in the
corner. It served as dining room, parlor, bedroom, for there was a
pallet too. Now the table was covered with parchments and papers, and
beside Colonel Clark sat a grave gentleman of about his own age. As I
came into the room Colonel Clark relaxed, turned toward this gentleman,
and said:--
“Monsieur Gratiot, behold my commissary-general, my strategist, my
financier.” And Monsieur Gratiot smiled. He struck me as a man who never
let himself go sufficiently to laugh.
“Ah,” he said, “Vigo has told me how he settled the question of paper
money. He might do something for the Congress in the East.”
“Davy is a Scotchman, like John Law,” said the Colonel, “and he is a
master at perceiving a man’s character and business.”
“What would you call me, at a venture, Davy?” asked Monsieur Gratiot.
He spoke excellent English, with only a slight accent.
“A citizen of the world, like Monsieur Vigo,” I answered at a hazard.
“Pardieu!” said Monsieur Gratiot, “you are not far away. Like Monsieur
Vigo I keep a store here at Cahokia. Like Monsieur Vigo, I have
travelled much in my day. Do you know where Switzerland is, Davy?”
I did not.
“It is a country set like a cluster of jewels in the heart of Europe,”
said Monsieur Gratiot, “and there are mountains there that rise amon the
clouds and are covered with perpetual snows. And when the sun sets on
those snows they are rubies, and the skies above them sapphire.”
“I was born amongst the mountains, sir,” I answered, my pulse quickening
at his description, “but they were not so high as those you speak of.”
“Then,” said Monsieur Gratiot, “you can understand a little my sorrow
as a lad when I left it. From Switzerland I went to a foggy place called
London, and thence I crossed the ocean to the solemn forests of the
north of Canada, where I was many years, learning the characters of
these gentlemen who are looking in upon us.” And he waved his arm at
the line of peering red faces by the pickets. Monsieur Gratiot smiled
at Clark. “And there’s another point of resemblance between myself and
Monsieur Vigo.”
“Have you taken the paper money?” I demanded.
Monsieur Gratiot slapped his linen breeches. “That I have,” and this
time I thought he was going to laugh. But he did not, though his eyes
sparkled. “And do you think that the good Congress will ever repay me,
Davy?”
“No, sir,” said I.
“Peste!” exclaimed Monsieur Gratiot, but he did not seem to be offended
or shaken.
“Davy,” said Colonel Clark, “we have had enough of predictions fo the
present. Fetch this letter to Captain Bowman at the garrison up the
street.” He handed me the letter. “Are you afraid of the Indians?”
“If I were, sir, I would not show it,” I said, for he had encouraged me
to talk freely to him.
“Avast!” cried the Colonel, as I was going out. “And why not?”
“If I show that I am not afraid of them, sir, they will think that you
are the less so.”
“There you are for strategy, Gratiot,” said Colonel Clark, laughing.
“Get out, you rascal.”
Tom was more concerned when I appeared.
“Don’t pester ‘em, Davy,” said he; “fer God’s sake don’t pester ‘em.
They’re spoilin’ fer a fight. Stand back thar, ye critters,” he shouted,
brandishing his rifle in their faces. “Ugh, I reckon it wouldn’t take a
horse or a dog to scent ye to-day. Rank b’ar’s oil! Kite along, Davy.”
Clutching the letter tightly, I slipped between the narrowed ranks,
and gained the middle of the street, not without a quickened beat of my
heart. Thence I sped, dodging this group and that, until I came to
the long log house that was called the garrison. Here our men were
stationed, where formerly a squad from an English regiment was
quartered. I found Captain Bowman, delivered the letter, and started
back again through the brown, dusty street, which lay in the shade of
the great forest trees that still lined it, doubling now and again
to avoid an idling brave that looked bent upon mischief. For a single
mischance might set the tide running to massacre.
I was nearing the gate again, the dust flying from my moccasined feet,
the sight of the stalwart Tom giving me courage again. Suddenly, with
the deftness of a panther, an Indian shot forward and lifted me high
in his arms. To this day I recall my terror as I dangled in mid-air,
staring into a hideous face. By intuition I kicked him in the stomach
with all my might, and with a howl of surprise and rage his fingers
gripped into my flesh. The next thing I remember was being in the dust,
suffocated by that odor which he who has known it can never forget.
A medley of discordant cries was in my ears. Then I was snatched up,
bumped against heads and shoulders, and deposited somewhere. Now it was
Tom’s face that was close to mine, and the light of a fierce anger was
in his blue eyes.
“Did they hurt ye, Davy?” he asked.
I shook my head. Before I could speak he was at the gate again,
confronting the mob of savages that swayed against the fence, and the
street was filled with running figures. A voice of command that I knew
well came from behind me. It was Colonel Clark’s.
“Stay where you are, McChesney!” he shouted, and Tom halted with his
hand on the latch.
“With your permission, I will speak to them,” said Monsieur Gratiot, who
had come out also.
I looked up at him, and he was as calm as when he had joked with me a
quarter of an hour since.
“Very well,” said Clark, briefly.
Monsieur Gratiot surveyed them scornfully.
“Where is the Hungry Wolf, who speaks English?” he said.
There was a stir in the rear ranks, and a lean savage with abnormal
cheek bones pushed forward.
“Hungry Wolf here,” he said with a grunt.
“The Hungry Wolf knew the French trader at Michilimackinac,” said
Monsieur Gratiot. “He knows that the French trader’s word is a true
word. Let the Hungry Wolf tell his companions that the Chief of the Long
Knives is very angry.”
The Hungry Wolf turned, and began to speak. His words, hoarse and
resonant, seemed to come from the depths of his body. Presently he
paused, and there came an answer from the fiend who had seized me. After
that there were many grunts, and the Hungry Wolf turned again.
“The North Wind mean no harm,” he answered. “He play with the son of
the Great White Chief, and his belly is very sore where the Chief’s son
kicked him.”
“The Chief of the Long Knives will consider the offence,” said Monsieur
Gratiot, and retired into the house with Colonel Clark. For a full
five minutes the Indians waited, impassive. And then Monsieur Gratiot
reappeared, alone.
“The Chief of the Long Knives is mercifully inclined to forgive,” he
said. “It was in play. But there must be no more play with the Chief’s
son. And the path to the Great Chief’s presence must be kept clear.”
Again the Hungry Wolf translated. The North Wind grunted and departed in
silence, followed by many of his friends. And indeed for a while after
that the others kept a passage clear to the gate.
As for the son of the Great White Chief, he sat for a long time that
afternoon beside the truck patch of the house. And presently he slipped
out by a byway into the street again, among the savages. His heart was
bumping in his throat, but a boyish reasoning told him that he must show
no fear. And that day he found what his Colonel had long since learned
to be true--that in courage is the greater safety. The power of the
Great White Chief was such that he allowed his son to go forth alone,
and feared not for his life. Even so Clark himself walked among them,
nor looked to right or left.
Two nights Colonel Clark sat through, calling now on this man and now
on that, and conning the treaties which the English had made with the
various tribes--ay, and French and Spanish treaties too--until he knew
them all by heart. There was no haste in what he did, no uneasiness
in his manner. He listened to the advice of Monsieur Gratiot and other
Creole gentlemen of weight, to the Spanish officers who came in their
regimentals from St. Louis out of curiosity to see how this man would
treat with the tribes. For he spoke of his intentions to none of them,
and gained the more respect by it. Within the week the council began;
and the scene of the great drama was a field near the village, the
background of forest trees. Few plays on the world’s stage have held
such suspense, few battles such excitement for those who watched. Here
was the spectacle of one strong man’s brain pitted against the combined
craft of the wilderness. In the midst of a stretch of waving grass was
a table, and a young man of six-and-twenty sat there alone. Around
him were ringed the gathered tribes, each chief in the order of his
importance squatted in the inner circle, their blankets making patches
of bright color against the green. Behind the tribes was the little
group of hunting shirts, the men leaning on the barrels of their long
rifles, indolent but watchful. Here and there a gay uniform of a Spanish
or Creole officer, and behind these all the population of the village
that dared to show itself.
The ceremonies began with the kindling of the council fire,--a rite
handed down through unknown centuries of Indian usage. By it nations had
been made and unmade, broad lands passed, even as they now might pass.
The yellow of its crackling flames was shamed by the summer sun, and the
black smoke of it was wafted by the south wind over the forest. Then for
three days the chiefs spoke, and a man listened, unmoved. The sound of
these orations, wild and fearful to my boyish ear, comes back to me now.
Yet there was a cadence in it, a music of notes now falling, now rising
to a passion and intensity that thrilled us.
Bad birds flying through the land (the British agents) had besought them
to take up the bloody hatchet. They had sinned. They had listened to
the lies which the bad birds had told of the Big Knives, they had taken
their presents. But now the Great Spirit in His wisdom had brought
themselves and the Chief of the Big Knives together. Therefore (suiting
the action to the word) they stamped on the bloody belt, and rent in
pieces the emblems of the White King across the water. So said the
interpreters, as the chiefs one after another tore the miniature British
flags which had been given them into bits. On the evening of the third
day the White Chief rose in his chair, gazing haughtily about him. There
was a deep silence.
“Tell your chiefs,” he said, “tell your chiefs that to-morrow I will
give them an answer. And upon the manner in which they receive that
answer depends the fate of your nations. Good night.”
They rose and, thronging around him, sought to take his hand. But Clark
turned from them.
“Peace is not yet come,” he said sternly. “It is time to take the hand
when the heart is given with it.”
A feathered headsman of one of the tribes gave back with dignity and
spoke.
“It is well said by the Great Chief of the Pale Faces,” he answered;
“these in truth are not the words of a man with a double tongue.”
So they sought their quarters for the night, and suspense hung
breathless over the village.
There were many callers at the stone house that evening,--Spanish
officers, Creole gentlemen, an English Canadian trader or two. With my
elbow on the sill of the open window I watched them awhile, listening
with a boy’s eagerness to what they had to say of the day’s doings.
They disputed amongst themselves in various degrees of English as to the
manner of treating the red man,--now gesticulating, now threatening,
now seizing a rolled parchment treaty from the table. Clark sat alone, a
little apart, silent save a word now and then in a low tone to Monsieur
Gratiot or Captain Bowman. Here was an odd assortment of the races which
had overrun the new world. At intervals some disputant would pause in
his talk to kill a mosquito or fight away a moth or a June-bug, but
presently the argument reached such a pitch that the mosquitoes fed
undisturbed.
“You have done much, sir,” said the Spanish commandant of St. Louis,
“but the savage, he will never be content without present. He will never
be won without present.”
Clark was one of those men who are perforce listened to when they begin
to speak.
“Captain de Leyba,” said he, “I know not what may be the present policy
of his Spanish Majesty with McGillivray and his Creeks in the south, but
this I do believe,” and he brought down his fist among the papers, “that
the old French and Spanish treaties were right in principle. Here
are copies of the English treaties that I have secured, and in them
thousands of sovereigns have been thrown away. They are so much waste
paper. Gentlemen, the Indians are children. If you give them presents,
they believe you to be afraid of them. I will deal with them without
presents; and if I had the gold of the Bank of England stored in the
garrison there, they should not touch a piece of it.”
But Captain de Leyba, incredulous, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
“Por Dios,” he cried, “whoever hear of one man and fifty militia
subduing the northern tribes without a piastre?”
After a while the Colonel called me in, and sent me speeding across the
little river with a note to a certain Mr. Brady, whose house was not far
away. Like many another citizen of Cahokia, Mr. Brady was terror-ridden.
A party of young Puan bucks had decreed it to be their pleasure to
encamp in Mr. Brady’s yard, to peer through the shutters into Mr.
Brady’s house, to enjoy themselves by annoying Mr. Brady’s family and
others as much as possible. During the Indian occupation of Cahokia this
band had gained a well-deserved reputation for mischief; and chief among
them was the North Wind himself, whom I had done the honor to kick
in the stomach. To-night they had made a fire in this Mr. Brady’s
flower-garden, over which they were cooking venison steaks. And, as I
reached the door, the North Wind spied me, grinned, rubbed his stomach,
made a false dash at me that frightened me out of my wits, and finally
went through the pantomime of scalping me. I stood looking at him with
my legs apart, for the son of the Great Chief must not run away. And
I marked that the North Wind had two great ornamental daubs like
shutter-fastenings painted on his cheeks. I sniffed preparation, too,
on his followers, and I was sure they were getting ready for some new
deviltry. I handed the note to Mr. Brady through the crack of the door
that he vouchsafed to me, and when he had slammed and bolted me out, I
ran into the street and stood for some time behind the trunk of a big
hickory, watching the followers of the North Wind. Some were painting
themselves, others cleaning their rifles and sharpening their scalping
knives. All jabbered unceasingly. Now and again a silent brave passed,
paused a moment to survey them gravely, grunted an answer to something
they would fling at him, and went on. At length arrived three chiefs
whom I knew to be high in the councils. The North Wind came out to them,
and the four blanketed forms stood silhouetted between me and the fire
for a quarter of an hour. By this time I was sure of a plot, and fled
away to another tree for fear of detection. At length stalked through
the street the Hungry Wolf, the interpreter. I knew this man to be
friendly to Clark, and I acted on impulse. He gave a grunt of surprise
when I halted before him. I made up my mind.
“The son of the Great Chief knows that the Puans have wickedness in
their hearts to-night,” I said; “the tongue of the Hungry Wolf does not
lie.”
The big Indian drew back with another grunt, and the distant firelight
flashed on his eyes as on polished black flints.
“Umrrhh! Is the Pale Face Chief’s son a prophet?”
“The anger of the Pale Face Chief and of his countrymen is as the
hurricane,” I said, scarce believing my own ears. For a lad is imitative
by nature, and I had not listened to the interpreters for three days
without profit.
The Hungry Wolf grunted again, after which he was silent for a long
time. Then he said:--
“Let the Chief of the Long Knives have guard tonight.” And suddenly he
was gone into the darkness.
I waded the creek and sped to Clark. He was alone now, the shutters of
the room closed. And as I came in I could scarce believe that he was
the same masterful man I had seen at the council that day, and at the
conference an hour gone. He was once more the friend at whose feet I sat
in private, who talked to me as a companion and a father.
“Where have you been, Davy?” he asked. And then, “What is it, my lad?”
I crept close to him and told him in a breathless undertone, and I
knew that I was shaking the while. He listened gravely, and when I had
finished laid a firm hand on my head.
“There,” he said, “you are a brave lad, and a canny.”
He thought a minute, his hand still resting on my head, and then rose
and led me to the back door of the house. It was near midnight, and the
sounds of the place were stilling, the crickets chirping in the grass.
“Run to Captain Bowman and tell him to send ten men to this door. But
they must come man by man, to escape detection. Do you understand?” I
nodded and was starting, but he still held me. “God bless you, Davy, you
are a brave boy.”
He closed the door softly and I sped away, my moccasins making no
sound on the soft dirt. I reached the garrison, was challenged by Jack
Terrill, the guard, and brought by him to Bowman’s room. The Captain
sat, undressed, at the edge of his bed. But he was a man of action, and
strode into the long room where his company was sleeping and gave his
orders without delay.
Half an hour later there was no light in the village. The Colonel’s
headquarters were dark, but in the kitchen a dozen tall men were
waiting.